journal of european integration history revue d'histoire de l ...

Introduction 7
such as the attempt to create a European Defence Community and for the more successful
undertakings such as the Schuman plan and the negotiation of the Treaties
of Rome. The traditional focus on the 1950’s and on the incentives – and the lack
thereof – in the nation states to engage in the integration process is well justified.
The time of birth of the European Community undoubtedly is the crux for understanding
why nation states have engaged in ceding sovereignty to the supranational
community and what was the original ‘contract’ of the integration process. Examining
why the Six set sails for the integration process that ended with the EU – and
why others did not (at that point of time at least) – is still an important subject for
researchers. Two of the contributions to this issue are analyzing these problems in a
country where dynamics and reluctance at one and the same time seem to have
been most manifest. Seung-Ryeol Kim’s article on France’s Agony between «Vocation
Européenne et Mondiale»: The Union Française as an Obstacle in the French
Policy of Supranational European Integration, 1952-1954 is a study of France’s attempts
to reconcile her priorities in the European policy with her world power status.
European considerations – especially in relation to Germany – brought the
French political leadership to engage first in the green pool negotiations and later in
the attempt to establish a European Army with a European Political Community as
a ‘roof organization’. It was, however, difficult to reconcile these policies with the
preservation of France’s world power role in which the Union Française was the
main pillar. Thus, Seung-Reyol Kim shows how the concern for the endangered
system of dependency between France and her earlier colonies contributed to the
French rejection of the green pool and to the failure to ratify the EDC treaty. While
Seung-Reyol Kim’s article focusses on the overseas aspect of French European
policy, Lise Rye Svartvatn’s In Quest of Time, Protection and Approval: France
and the Claims for Social Harmonisation in the European Economic Community,
1955-56 turns the attention to the French domestic political considerations during
the negotiations on the Treaty of Rome. Lise Rye Svartvatn’s work shows how
France’s social policy pursued at European level intended to achieve the domestic
aims of securing a continued expansion and modernisation of French industry. In itself
a reflection of temporal problems and domestic, political disunity on the question
of European integration, the line pursued by France had nevertheless longterm effects
on the institutional and policy-oriented compromises in the Treaty of Rome.
Still, however important this original compromise on the Treaty of Rome was,
the functions and dynamics of the European Communities met with changes in the
face of challenges from outside forces. Even though the integration process initiated
by the Six was progressively to become the heart of the development of European
institution-building and co-operation, it should be remembered that the Six did
not have the monopoly in European integration and co-operation in the 1950’s and
1960’s. Till now the relationship between those inside the union and those outside
(or waiting to join) has been one of the most critical factors of the history of the European
community. This was so already with the divide between the Anglo-Scandinavian
functionalists and the Continental federalists at the time of the foundation of
the Council of Europe in 1949, the break-up of the OEEC in 1958-59 and the Euro-